Reaching the grand age of 100 today is Janis Paige who was born on the 16th September 1922. We wish her well.
In Hollywood , at Warner Brothers, from 1944, Janis made over 100 film and television appearances.
Janis Paige
When film roles dried up in 1951, Janis showed her fine singing voice on stage and in cabaret while taking roles on many TV shows.
She will be remembered for creating the role of ‘Babe Williams’ in The Pajama Game on Broadway and her role in Silk Stockings, dancing and singing with Fred Astaire.
I paid tribute to Janis in my post of 9th July 2020.
i’ve still to catch her 1949 film with Wayne Morris, “ House Across the Street”.
With Fred Astaire
Vienna's Classic Hollywood
She was – and is- a force to be reckoned with!
Pity her role in “Romance on the High Seas” with Doris Day wasn’t a bit larger, though. But she did sparkle in “Silk Stockings” as you say.
Now there is some welcome news to celebrate!
Good news indeed. Haven’t seen Romance on the High Seas in an age. Thanks, Siriami, for the news of Janis’s birthday.
“The House across the Street” begins on Turner Classic Movies’ East-Coast feed in ten minutes (2:45 p.m. E.D.T.)!
Hope you enjoy it. If only the U.K. TCM would show it.
Wow, 100 years old! Happy Birthday Janis! She was – and probably still is – a spitfire. I first saw her in Bachelor in Paradise with Bob Hope and then fell in love with all her films of the 1940s ( especially Romance on the High Seas ). She had a great figure, too.
Definitely someone who should have been a bigger star.
In addition to her great performance on original B’way cast album of “The Pajama Game”, she did many other stage roles and sang memorably of “the ladies who lunch” in the first and best production I ever saw of “Company”, in the mid-1970s.
While it’s a pity she wasn’t asked to repeat her role in “Pajama” on film, George Abbot again directed a fine production rightly considered (along with “Love Me Tonight”) to be one of the best-ever film musicals and perhaps THE best adaptation from the stage… yet it’s almost never shown. I wonder why!?
Oh to have seen Janis do “Ladies who Lunch”. Lucky you!
I agree the film version of Pajama Game was excellent.
When I worked backstage at CBS-TV City in the 1950’s, she appeared on the Jack Benny “Shower of Stars” doing a song and dance number with Betty Grable ! ( Janis was called in at the last minute, when Nanette Fabric had to drop out. She learned everything in one day.!
What a great story .Thank you. Must try and find some of Janis’s TV appearances.
Here’s The Jack Benny show with Janis singing “Two Little Girls from Little Rock”, And “There Once Was A Man” with John Raitt !!
Jack Benny Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAZlp9C6Drk
Thanks so much for the link. Great to see Janis with Betty Grable and John Raitt.